


Maybe that was the price

by Shadowdianne



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-19
Updated: 2016-01-19
Packaged: 2018-05-14 21:39:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5759794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadowdianne/pseuds/Shadowdianne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>But it was her the one who guide the blonde, who touched the blonde’s neck, feeling the strange softness against the lean muscles that seemed to tremble under her fingers as she went up. It was her the one who found herself unable to breathe, the heat of magic echoing on her chest.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Maybe that was the price

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kyravalon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kyravalon/gifts).



> A/N Maybe that was the price, or Tal vez ese era el precio on its Spanish version was a fic I wrote for pauavalon four months ago and I promised myself that I would translate it to English whenever I had the time. Unfortunately, I completely forgot about it and my promise of doing so until the incredible Lady Bardo reminded me so yeah, this is thanks to her :P  
> (The story was written before the bullshit they tried to feed us with on the finale so every continuity mistake is just that.)  
> I have always loved angst so… yup, sorry not sorry.  
> Disclaimer: Sadly I don’t own them.

“Kill her”

That had been the last words she received before going out to the main street, words that she had looked them up with disdain as Zelena returned her gaze, a smirk on her face, almost challenging.

And everything have been easier before, when the reality had seemed so distant than the mere idea was a complete stupidity. But now, with magic running up her veins and looking straightly at the woman she had in front of her everything seemed different. Too different.

Regina smiled, letting escape a whimper that could have perfectly been a sob as the hand that hold the dagger fell limply at her side. She couldn’t, wasn’t able, and maybe that was the worst thing of all, that, even with everything, with every word, with every promise she had made, she had also knew from the very beginning that if she ever stood in front of that scenario she wasn’t going to be able to choose the final decision.

And maybe Emma, the part of Emma that still had been her when they had found her on the enchanted forest had already foreseen that. The thought made her smile between the veil of tears that now covered her eyes.

Damn it.

In front of her Emma kept looking at her, impassively, her own clothes torn and tattered, letting the badly-healed induced magic injuries visible. Magic that was turning more unstable as moments passed. Her eyes didn’t seem to see Regina and yet, when the former queen looked at her once again and stared at her, trying to find something, anything, there was a spark for recognition that seemed to made the air around them shimmer softly, swelling with magic.

“You told me that I had failed you” Regina remembered, raising her voice and twisting her mouth slightly upwards in distaste when the movement alone made the wound around her mouth start to bleed once again. Closing her hand tighter around the dagger she let herself give a step closer towards the other woman, feeling an almost electric caress due to the power the two of them summoned.

“You did” Emma answered crudely, not looking at anything except her now, a cruel smile on her lips, that damned smirk that seemed to be full of long ago worn rage, one that made her eyes look incredibly sad for only a few seconds. “I trusted you”

Regina only stared at her, unable, unable to remember of what Emma was talking about.

“Give our memories back, let me help you” She whispered, her voice breaking at the last words, remembering nitidity the moment in where Emma had entered Granny’s after their strange return from Camelot. She hadn’t felt fear, rage or disappointment. Just shame, shame because she had obviously failed the woman that she owned her life to, a woman that had confided her her soul in the form of a cursed dagger. “Please” Asked, her voice so soft that for a few seconds she doubted that Emma had really heard her.

Around them rubble of what had once been the road that surrounded the cafeteria trembled for a second, moved by an elemental magic that seemed to fill the air, becoming stronger as minutes passed. Regina looked around her but felt the tremor under her feet, real, dangerous.

“You can’t” The blonde replied after a moment, her eyes shining with every word “You failed Regina, what you can do now is accept it”

Looking briefly at the dagger the fingers of the former queen caressed the letters that decorated the blade of the weapon, the cold metal throbbing under the touch of her tips. Magic seemed to grow in strength, like an animal holding its breath, waiting.

 _“To what?”_ The brunette questioned herself before turning back to Emma. She knew that the others were close, that the circle of strangers were just a few meters away, kneeled behind the barricades that Granny had built a few hours before. And even if her pride scratched and groaned she continued to look at the blonde, repeating again that soft “Please” that made her lips tremble.

Strength didn’t come with cruelty or coldness, she had learn that much not so long ago and even so it was maybe too late for her to remedy the errors she may or may not had made before it could be possible for her to make Emma turn back to the woman she had been once… the woman that had given her soul for her.

“Emma, please” She repeated for a third time, her voice shaking as she felt a drop of blood running down her cheek, her wounds opening once again with the contact of magic.

“If what you want is help me” Emma answered back, her lips twisted in the smile of someone that already knows the answer to a riddle “Do what my parents pleaded you a few minutes ago and kill me”

The way she referred to the Charmings made Regina feel an ice cube grazing her back, cold filling up her veins. She knew that Emma was right in some aspects, that the hate in her words, in the way it seemed to be curled behind her tongue, was more or less justified; they hadn’t been for her daughter when she had needed them but, she made herself remember, as it seemed she also hadn’t been at Emma’s side when she had asked for help, help that she had promised to give no matter what.

Maybe that was the reason, she let her mind think, tiredness already starting to sink on her body, the reason why she still kept trying even though Emma had denied over and over again to be saved, to be understood.

“We both know that I would prefer not to” She finally replied, biting her bottom lip when the woman in front of her laughed, her voice echoing in the ruins of the former dinner, making even a few sparkles from a nearby splitted light post to jump, lighting softly the place for a few seconds.

“Try better with you can’t Regina”

And that’s, she though as she looked at Emma, darkness already circling them once again, what had precisely happened.

“You asked me to kill you” She whispered, her eyes widening. At her back something close to Snow’s and David’s voices seemed to aguishly reach where the two of them where but she didn’t looked at them. “Back in Camelot”

Emma clapped mockingly, a dark smirk appearing now on her face.

“We have a winner” She answered as her eyes turned grim. “But you couldn’t do it, even when Arthur told us that it was our only chance, that if you do it before I was completely transformed the power of the dagger would go back to Merlin. But you didn’t do it”

Her voice had go from cold to angry and Regina saw in that second the Emma that had managed to get a warrant when everything was against her, the Emma that had go against Peter Pan because it was what she needed to do even if she didn’t exactly feel ready, the Emma that had taken the title and name of the savior the same way she had taken the title of Queen. And even though now she had changed thanks to dark magic and a prophecy that bound her against her will there was still something there, inside, just below her reach.

“You should have known” She heard herself saying, her lips moving slowly. Even though she didn’t remember Camelot, the decisions she had made on that realm, the vague memory of a shadowy figure looking at her, asking for a death she didn’t believe in, filled her mind for a few seconds “I don’t need to fulfill my promises”

“And why is that Regina?” Emma replied, writhing as if Regina’s words were weapons, magic trembling and sizing around them, little dots of white magic, almost grey, following Emma’s every step.

Regina didn’t answer to that, unable to. She, however, saw the answer on Emma’s eyes when she looked back at her, fear glowing behind her pupils.

“Why do you want me to tell you?” She asked, taking a step forward, rocks and gravel crunching behind her feet “It doesn’t matter, I didn’t kill you, my reasons aren’t important”

But they mattered and both women knew it. They were important in the same way that it mattered why Emma had managed to open up the portal with the aid of just a hat and a touch. They mattered because of the same reason Regina had absorbed the dead curse on that well, almost dying just because of a possibility. They mattered just like it had mattered the moment Regina had asked Emma to see her like Regina and the blonde had nodded, keeping at her side. It mattered just as it had mattered the lunar eclipse they had done, it mattered for every second, moment, instant in where the two of them had trusted in the other under fake pretenses of hate and loathing. They mattered, like they had ever done. And this time Emma was asking for it.

Even though Regina didn’t have the answer, didn’t want to say it.

“You will need to kill me” Emma was saying in that moment “If you want to stop me”

And it was ironically cruel that the two of them were looking at each other in the middle of a ruined Storybrooke with Regina as a savior and Emma the woman who was now feared and loathed. It was almost sadistic, a new turn of a story that Regina was already too tired of it, too wounded because of it.

Maybe, she said to herself, Henry was able to keep it going but the possibility was just a mirage whereas the battle, the possibility of death, was something just far too real, to close to trying not to think about it.

“In fact” Emma kept saying with that same smirk that made Regina gulp down slowly a hitched breath, the memory of another woman looking back at her for a second “If you want to save everyone you will need to do it”

“True love…” Regina said, her voice faltering when Emma snickered, taking one last step into her direction, the two of them feeling the body heat of the other, magic crackling intoxicatingly against them.

“You aren’t my mother Regina, you know that are things that love, that that kiss, can’t stop. Or change”

Regina kept looking at Emma, the same vague moments, foggy silhouettes still filling her mind.

“There must be another solution then” She replied quickly, her right hand protesting due to the way she kept holding the dagger, nails digging deep on the soft skin of her palm.

“There isn’t” The blonde answered back, her own right hand caressing Regina’s cheek, making her tremble at the same time her eyes went from staring at those green eyes to that palm for a second. Magic kept surrounding them, titillating for a second as they held that moment, breaths mingling, pieces of hexes and old spells they had casted a few minutes before visible now under the pale light that bathed the two of them.

And maybe that solution didn’t exist but Regina felt the dagger between Emma and she and she knew herself unable, unable to kill that life, unable to fulfil that destiny, that story. The two of them had walked together, had fought together, far too much and a decision like that, just a line on the final chapter of a prewritten story that had never been their own, wasn’t what Emma deserved.

She realized that she was crying when the salty taste of tears reached her lips, the cupric taste of blood mixed on it.

And when she looked back to Emma’s green eyes she saw there the reflection of tears that would never fall.

“You promised me” The blonde replied, a breaking, tired sound that reached Regina’s heart. Emma’s powers seemed to be disappearing as she talked, sadness overtaking her. “You picked up the dagger”

And yes, she had, she had accepted the legacy Emma had asked her to take but maybe she wasn’t detached enough from her to kill her under the pretense of some king of greater good. Regina’s insides trembled, as if magic was waiting for her, begging her, pressure building under her scalp.

“And why I would have done with it?” She defended herself, her eyes now looking at her hands in where small sparks seemed to play with her skin “Let your mother be the one with the dagger? Give it to the pirate?”

Emma sighed and smiled for a second, a cold simple smile but yet one that resembled more to the one she had given to Regina back when she had been another kind of woman, one still full of hope.

“I would have never given the dagger to the pirate” She finally admitted “And you know why”

And yes, Regina knew it, knew the reason and the lie that would go behind it, the false resolutions and the sad smile that tried to hide the decision, that it would forever be there. It was the same reason for what she was unable to kill Emma, even if that was truly the only option the really had.

It didn’t matter, they were the only ones who had that last piece of their puzzle.

“I was furious when you didn’t confide me your heart” Regina heard, Emma shrugging when she looked back at her, the blonde’s wound bleeding profusely now, her skin seeming to be held tight against her cheekbones, her eyes shining feverishly. “I think you knew”

“I had a lot to decide, to think about” The brunette answered back “A lot to lose, I thought that he was the easier option”

“And yet…” Emma continued, her voice sounding cold once again.

“And yet”

Both of them looked at each other, Regina sensing her heart against her ribcage, ready to jump out of it the moment Emma transformed herself once again, the last few minutes of honesty and trust disappearing as quick as they had unfolded in front of the two of them.

“Take the decision” The blonde whispered “It’s the last chance you will ever have”

And Regina knew that even with all the baffling Emma’s last words were truthful and that moments was the last one she would ever hand. A last chance that the Emma she had met was offering her from the inside of the woman she had turned herself into.

The last chance, the last option.

Maybe that was it, she though with tears on her eyes, her skin feeling on the point of breaking as she let the dagger fell from her grip, the metallic clank ricocheting far too loudly on her ears when it reached the destroyed floor of the main street.

“No”

Reaching forward she grabbed the leather Emma worse, her eyes focusing solely on the blonde’s, hoping to find something at the other side.

“No” She repeated, shuddering this time, her lips just a few millimeters away from Emma’s, the smell of magic and sulfur making her voice sound raspy, strange. The sound of the falling dagger seemed to still be engraved on her mind, unable to disappear from it.

It was Emma the one who kissed her, her lips biting her lips, making her open up her mouth. But it was her the one who guide the blonde, who touched the blonde’s neck, feeling the strange softness against the lean muscles that seemed to tremble under her fingers as she went up. It was her the one who found herself unable to breathe, the heat of magic echoing on her chest. It was the one who felt that same heat spilling on her throat, deafening all sound, her hands now grabbing Emma’s body, who, rigid, tried also to keep standing.

She didn’t see however the magical explosion that surrounded them, Destiny finally leaving Storybrooke, the story finally finished, one that it had first been started to be told too far away in time that it was impossible to actually know when. She didn’t saw the hope that seemed to fill the eyes of the ones that had been looking their exchange, nor she heard the scream a raging Hook made. She didn’t saw but touch was the last sense she kept until the end, her digits still sensing Emma, the dagger in some place under them, waiting, Emma’s name disappearing, cracks appearing on the helm, earth trembling under their feet.

She didn’t see, feel or hear, her lips parted in an eternal kiss, the light slowly disappearing and with it taking the last price they had needed to pay, the last toll of that last chapter. Ying and yang, darkness and light, two sides of the same coin.

At the end magic had always been that piece, that last answer. The path they had needed to take had only helped them to lose and find themselves in the last possible moment.

And it was magic the one that, the moment where David first and Snow second approached the crater magic had left, made them see at first just their interlaced fingers followed by her forever opened eyes.

At the end Emma had been right, it had truly been her last chance.


End file.
